Tu préfères un kiwi ou une mangue avec quelques framboises?

Tu is the informal singular word for you. It is used with friends, family, children, or people you know well.

Vous is used for:

• one person in a formal situation
• more than one person

So this sentence sounds informal: Tu préfères... ?
A more formal version would be Vous préférez... ?

In French, you can make a question just by using normal statement word order and raising your intonation at the end in speech. In writing, the question mark shows that it is a question:

Tu préfères un kiwi ou une mangue avec quelques framboises ?

This is very common in everyday spoken French.

French also has other ways to ask the same thing:

• Est-ce que tu préfères un kiwi ou une mangue avec quelques framboises ?
• Préfères-tu un kiwi ou une mangue avec quelques framboises ?

All three are correct.

Préfères is the tu form of the verb préférer in the present tense.

The spelling changes because verbs like préférer often change é to è in stressed forms:

• je préfère
• tu préfères
• il/elle préfère
• nous préférons
• vous préférez
• ils/elles préfèrent

So préfères has:

• -es because it agrees with tu
• è because of the usual stem change in this verb pattern

French nouns have grammatical gender.

• kiwi is masculine, so it takes un
• mangue is feminine, so it takes une

This does not mean the fruit itself is biologically male or female. It is just a grammatical category that French nouns belong to.

There actually does not need to be an article because quelques already acts as a determiner.

In French, you usually use only one determiner before a noun:

• des framboises
• quelques framboises
• les framboises

So quelques framboises is complete by itself and means a few raspberries or some raspberries.

Quelques framboises means a few raspberries and gives a more specific idea of a small quantity.

Des framboises would simply mean some raspberries in a more general way.

So the difference is mainly:

• des framboises = some raspberries
• quelques framboises = a few raspberries

Grammatically, it can sound a little ambiguous.

Many people would understand it as:

• Do you prefer a kiwi or a mango, with a few raspberries?

That can suggest the raspberries go with the choice in general.

But because avec quelques framboises comes right after une mangue, some listeners may feel it is attached more closely to une mangue.

If you want to make it clearer, you could rephrase:

• Tu préfères, avec quelques framboises, un kiwi ou une mangue ?
  This makes the raspberries apply more clearly to both.
• Tu préfères un kiwi, ou une mangue avec quelques framboises ?
  This makes it sound more like only the mango has raspberries.

Usually, yes. Ou means or.

In a sentence like this, it presents a choice:

• un kiwi ou une mangue

Just like in English, the exact meaning can depend on context. Sometimes or means one choice only, and sometimes it can be looser. In this sentence, it simply offers alternatives.

A careful pronunciation is roughly:

Tu préfères un kiwi ou une mangue avec quelques framboises ?
ty pre-fair œ̃ ki-wi u yn mãg avɛk kɛlk frãbwaz

A few useful pronunciation points:

• tu sounds like ty, not like English too
• préfères has an open è sound, like eh
• un is nasal: œ̃
• ou sounds like English oo
• une sounds like ewn with a rounded vowel
• mangue is pronounced like mang, with the final -ue not fully pronounced like English oo-ee
• framboises sounds roughly like frãbwaz

In natural speech, some sounds may be smoother or shorter.

Quelques means a few or some and it is normally used with a plural noun.

Since framboises is plural, the determiner is quelques:

• quelques framboises

You would not say quelque framboises here, because the noun is plural.

Yes. Préfères-tu un kiwi ou une mangue avec quelques framboises ? is correct.

That structure is called inversion, where the verb comes before the subject pronoun. It is more formal or more traditionally written than simple spoken-style Tu préfères... ?

So:

• Tu préfères... ? = very common in speech
• Est-ce que tu préfères... ? = very common and clear
• Préfères-tu... ? = more formal or written

Yes, kiwi is used in French too. It is a normal French noun, and it is masculine: un kiwi.

Its pronunciation is fairly close to English kiwi, though French speakers use French vowel sounds and rhythm. So an English speaker will recognize it easily, but it will not sound exactly the same as in English.